TortoiseMerge is a free/open-source application. It lets you see differences in text files, merge those changes and even review and apply unified diff files, often called patches.

While working on text files, e.g. source files in your favourite programming language, or html/xml files for your documentation or website, you will often have a situation where you need to compare different versions of those files. Sometimes you get a different version from someone else, sometimes you just want to see the changes you've made.

If you're working with a version control system (e.g. Subversion) then you sometimes get conflicts when you update your working copy. This happens if someone else changed the same parts of the file you're currently working on as you did. Then you have to resolve those conflicts manually. This is where TortoiseMerge can help you.

The following diagram shows you the relationships between the files involved in a conflict:

Figure 1.1. File Conflict